strip

- strip symbol table, debugging and line number information from an object file

Synopsis

strip [-lVx] file...

Description

The strip command removes the symbol table SHT_SYMTAB and its associated string
table, debugging information, and line number information from ELF object files. That
is, besides the symbol table and associated string table, the following sections are
removed:

.line
.debug*
.stab*

Once this stripping process has been done, limited symbolic debugging access is
available for that file. Therefore, this command is normally run only on
production modules that have been debugged and tested.

If strip is executed on a common archive file (see ar.h(3HEAD)) in
addition to processing the members, strip removes the archive symbol table. The archive
symbol table must be restored by executing the ar(1) command with the
-s option before the archive can be linked by the ld(1) command. strip
produces appropriate warning messages when this situation arises.

strip is used to reduce the file storage overhead taken by the
object file.

Options

The amount of information stripped from the ELF object file can
be controlled by using any of the following options. The following options
are supported:

-l

Strip line number information only.Does not strip the symbol table or debugging information.

-V

Prints, on standard error, the version number of strip.

-x

Does not strip the symbol table. Debugging and line number information might be stripped.

Operands

The following operand is supported:

file

A path name referring to an executable file.

Environment Variables

See environ(5) for descriptions of the following environment variables that affect the
execution of strip: LANG, LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, LC_MESSAGES, and NLSPATH.